I left the store. There wasn’t much there for me now, save for some tools and camping gear, but I didn’t need them now. I could always come back for them.
Rowdy and I walked back to the library by a different road, choosing to walk along the main thoroughfare of Sun Prairie. This four-lane road led to the main street in the downtown area, and it began just off Highway 151, where most of the franchised businesses holed up. Taco Bell, Subway, Kwik Trip, and Culver’s were all along this stretch of road.
I cannot convey the proper sense of eeriness I felt as I walked down the center of the snow-covered road, which would have been pristine save for the fading remnants of snowmobile tracks I’d made days earlier. I got the sense of being watched. Silly as that is to say, I kept jerking my head toward the windows of the businesses, convinced that I would see some leering skeleton staring at me. The whole feeling of being alone, but thinking you’re not alone is something to which I never really became accustomed. It was hard to reconcile the truth of the situation with the fact that in my entire life, I’d never truly been alone. I could be by myself, sure--but never alone. There were always people around town, cars, joggers, cyclists. Now, even though I was certain there wasn’t a living soul within a hundred miles or more, I could not get over the idea that I was alone. Seventeen years of ingrained acculturation into a community is hard to simply set aside.
As we moved together down the road, Rowdy was sniffing at the snow and walking a weaving helix path in front of me. He would get a good distance ahead of me, and then stop and turn back, as if he was scared I might change directions on him. At Ruby Lane, Rowdy froze and lifted his head. He was hearing something. He focused north, away from the library, and toward the subdivision that lurked behind the Kwik Trip.
'What do you hear, boy?' I started to walk past him, but Rowdy gave a half-bark. He wanted my attention. He whined and circled, but kept facing north. Something was definitely wrong. The hair on the back of my neck stood up on end and I cautiously pulled the shotgun off my back. I checked to make sure it was loaded and used my thumb to pop the safety to off.
I took a few steps to the north and heard it: a low, pitiful moaning. It wasn’t human, though. I started to jog toward the sound. Rowdy was at my heels, reluctantly. I made it to the street behind Kwik Trip and saw the evidence of lots of animal tracks. It looked like a whole herd of cattle had moved through this area since the last snow. The lowing sound came again from the west, definitely a cow. I could hear it better.
I jogged as fast as my winter gear and the drifted snow would allow, and I found the source of the noise. In schoolyard of Westside Elementary, I found evidence of an epic battle of some sort. Dog tracks and cattle tracks were everywhere. It looked as though the dogs had chased a small herd into the schoolyard and the chain link fence around the school had confused the cows. The snow in the yard was bloody with cattle effluence. There were three cows dead, that much I could tell. They had been gutted and feasted upon by dogs, probably some coyotes later on, and maybe even some foxes and cats. There was a fourth cow lying some distance from the others, wounded badly. The cow had fallen and the dogs had bitten it repeatedly. It had wounds in the neck and stomach, and its legs were badly bitten. One leg looked as if it had even been gnawed off and taken somewhere else. The cow must have passed out from the stress at the time, and the dogs feasted on the other cows which had likely been excoriated by then. That was the only thing that made sense to me. Why would the dogs leave a living meal otherwise?
The cow was in the final throes, of that there was no doubt. It was beyond saving at this point. It was grotesquely wounded, half-frozen, and barely clinging to life. Only the stubbornness of an animal’s will to live kept this cow going. As I approached it, the cow lifted its big head. This one was only a yearling, not quite a fully-grown animal, but far from being a calf. Its big, dark eyes seemed to plead with me. It looked to me for help. It wanted me to fix everything, but there wasn’t anything I could do for it. No amount of medicine or science could fix this mess. The shotgun felt awkward in my hands, heavy. It felt unwieldy and foreign. I had never really shot a gun. I hadn’t even taken them out for target practice. I was not a gun guy. I was not becoming a gun guy. I hated the fact that I had to rely on that thick, black barrel for protection. I hated that I felt a need to resort to it, because that need only echoed the fact that I had no idea what the future held for me and that I had to be prepared for anything and that deep down inside, I was always riding a raggedy edge between terrified and piss-my-pants terrified.
The cow struggled to keep its head up and slowly lowered its face back into the snow. It closed its eyes and rested, murmuring a low, pained throat noise. I had to do it. Every second I delayed was torture. I braced the gunstock against my shoulder, squared the barrel to the creature’s brain, closed my eyes, and ended the animal’s suffering.
The sharp thunder roar of the gun scared me. It shook me to my foundation. I wasn’t prepared for something that loud, that violent, after so many months of monastic silence. It deafened me. The kick practically tore the gun from my grip, and I felt the recoil jar my shoulder badly. It would bruise later on, I was sure. When I dared open my eyes, the cow had ceased to be. I had taken it from its pain and released it to oblivion.
I can wax poetic about this now, but at the time, I cried. I didn’t weep. I wasn’t sobbing, but I felt the loss of the animal. And that reminded me of my own loss. And that stirred up images and emotions that I would rather had not dealt with at that moment. Tears leaked from my eyes and stung my cheeks with cold when the wind hit them, but I couldn’t stop them. Someone had to grieve for this poor animal.
I left the beast in the snow and jogged back to the library with Rowdy at my heels. I needed to make some good of this. I needed to get the animal back to the library. I needed to dress the thing, and make sure that I got at least some meat from it, so that it wasn’t all a waste. That sounds horrible, I know. It was the only way I could make the situation make sense, though. I got my knife from the library, and I locked Rowdy in the annex by the fire. I got the snowmobile and the game sled from the nearby garage and took them to the school as fast as I could.
I would like to say that I field-dressed that animal like a pro, that all the studying in Field & Stream magazine had paid off and I carved the carcass like an expert.
I would like to say that, but I can’t.
From the first moment of plunging the blade of the knife into the animal’s body, I made a holy mess of it. Despite the animal’s blood loss, it still had plenty left in the cavity. The muscle mass was thicker than I anticipated and I ended up sawing more than deftly cutting through the hide and musculature. The bones were too thick to saw through with my knife. For those, I would need a chainsaw, and that was back at the library. I field-dressed the cow as best I could, removing the organs and hollowing out its body cavity, getting my arms, chest, and thighs coated in slippery, sticky blood, blood that both soaked into the top layer of my winter gear and then froze, making me cold and uncomfortable.
When it came time to move the cow to the game sled, I couldn’t. I simply did not have that strength. A 600-plus pound cow was an entirely different creature than a hundred-plus pound deer. I ended up having to improvise with a length of rope I’d stored in one of the sled’s storage compartments. I made a large circle of rope and worked it around the cow’s head and chest, securing it beneath her forelegs. I tied the other end to the back of the game sled with as many thick knots as I could manage. Then, I used the snowmobile to drag the cow back to the library. It wasn’t pretty, and it didn’t go well. Twice I got the animal hung up in a snowdrift and I had to stomp the drift flat around it to continue, but I did it. I got the thing back to the shed at the library.
Once there, I had to clean the chainsaw’s blades and then proceeded with the gory task of carving the parts of the animal I couldn’t and wouldn’t use. I took off its legs, because they were mostly chewed through. I removed its head. I know
there was good meat on the head, but after it had looked at me with big, pleading doe eyes, I couldn’t in good conscience eat anything from its head. It would be hard enough eating its body.
I had to bifurcate the animal down the spinal column, and then cut each half in half again in order to get big slabs of meat and bone that I could at least struggle to put into the shed I’d built. They would freeze there and keep for the remainder of the winter, I hoped. I doubted that I could eat the entire animal before spring. That would be a horrendous amount of meat, hundreds of pounds of it. However, it would be very appreciated, by both Rowdy and myself, to have something new in our nightly repasts.
I hung the slabs from the rafters with stout rope. The last bits of blood and fluid drained from them as they hung there, still retaining some of the animal’s last body heat. Wisps of steam escaped the tissues like ghosts. I used a sharp chef’s knife to carve off a good hunk of loin, and I put that into the Dutch oven with some dried onions and water. I set it on the fire to do whatever magic Dutch ovens do.
Then, took my bloody winter gear and tried to wash it as best I could. I managed to get most of the blood out of the pants and the jacket, but the red that remained permanently stained the fabric. I was thankful that I’d taken two sets from Cabela’s when I had. One set was now going to be my regular clothes, and the ones I’d worn that day would become my hunting clothes.
It was well after dark when I finally settled at my seat by the fire and took the roast from the cast iron. The smells of succulent roasting beef had been escaping between the lid and the pot for an hour. The entire annex smelled of rich, savory meat.
I wasn’t hungry in the way that people who were starving are hungry. I was lucky. I’d been eating regularly, but the meals were mostly uninspired. I’d eaten more Ramen packets than I cared to admit (and I probably had high sodium in my blood to show for it), boxed cereals, oatmeal by the ton, and pre-packaged snack bars and Rice Krispy treats. I wasn’t starving. I should have felt lucky. I was grateful for what I’d had, no question, but I wasn’t thrilled to have it. Friend, let me tell you this: that hunk of roast beef was life-changing in all the best ways.
The beef was rich and savory. It practically melted on the tongue. I needed no knife to cut it. I salted it well, and that sufficed. I needed no gravy. I needed nothing but that beef. I had half a mind to be purely selfish and eat the whole round chunk myself, but an assertive Labrador kept strict eye-contact with me and routinely licked his chops. I had to relent and pluck off a hunk of it for him. Unlike me however, Rowdy snarfed up his portion in moments, wolfing it down in three fast bites. I took my sweet time and lingered over every bite. I started dreaming about what to do with more meat. I had five-minute rice and instant potatoes. I had jars of gravy. I could make a feast, and I would in the future. For now I filled my belly to bursting on probably two pounds of finely cooked fresh beef. It was a horrible thing I’d had to do that day, and maybe that poor cow didn’t deserve it, but that was going to be the way it was if I wanted to eat this well. I had to come to terms with it, and the taste of the meat helped me do that to a large degree.
The next morning, I saw dog tracks around the library, a fair amount of them around the shed where I’d hung the beef sides. The legs and the head had been dragged away by the pack.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
February is Balls Cold
If you will indulge me this minor bit of cursing: February can go straight to hell.
It happens every year. January is cold as hell. There’s a ton of snow. The temperatures suck, there’s horrible wind chills, and when you think it can’t get worse, February likes to roll in and repeatedly and mercilessly punch you in crotch, reminding you that January was just the warm-up act. January is the sparring partner; February is the heavyweight champion of cold and general suckage. The temperatures aren’t what gets you, it’s the damned wind, but don’t think the temperatures are much fun. I spent at least twelve straight days below zero. I’m talking the high temperature was in the negative single digits. The overnights would routinely settle between negative twenty-five and screw you very much.
I was burning a lot of wood during the winter. I was glad I had a metric crap-ton of it to draw from in the community center, because I was starting to think every last stick of it might be necessary. Truthfully, I’d maybe gone through about a third of all that I’d hauled in over the summer, but keeping a large enough fire to keep the annex heated to a comfortable level was costly. It took a lot of wood to keep a fire burning all day, and it was a pain in the rear to spade out ashes into a metal pail every day, too.
I spent a lot of my time just keeping my living quarters up and viable. I broke down and braved the cold long enough to go out and get plastic window sheeting to help minimize drafts. That helped some. I started using a blanket stuffed at the base of the door to keep heat from leaking out of the annex. Rowdy even tried to minimize his necessary bodily functions, resisting the urge to heed nature’s call until it was an absolute must. The bathroom I used was still undergoing a fair amount of water-flushing each day in my attempt to keep the pipes working, but in the daily uses where I had to break down and actually stick my bare ass to the frosted plastic seat I cursed everything under the sun while I hurried through my business. Frankly I’m amazed human beings lived as long as we had. If I had been one of those early pioneers who had to build an outhouse and dig a latrine for it, I probably would have just given up and gone to Central America to live naked in the rainforests. Sure, I might have had to deal with mosquitoes and leeches, but at least my butt wouldn’t have frostbite.
The beef in the shed was keeping Rowdy and me well fed, at least. I was indulging myself by making actual meals with the meat as a nice change from the prepackaged blech that I’d used to keep myself alive until then. I made my Dutch oven bread, rice, instant mashed potatoes, canned veggies, and even tried my hand at some stews and slow-cooked beef ribs. That was the brightest spot in the winter; I was able to eat enough to keep me feeling full, and that improved my mood.
After my claiming of the dead cow, I started to see the dog pack that was running around Sun Prairie more often. It was larger than I expected, made up mainly of larger dogs. I saw some Pits, some Golden Retrievers, a few Labs, a Saint Bernard, and a bunch of dogs of mixed heritage. There were no little dogs. I assumed the little dogs probably couldn’t survive the cold, or else the larger dogs mistook them for food. Either way, the little dogs I’d freed before were either hiding or they were dead.
The dogs seemed to know that there was food in the shed. I watched them from the doorway of the library once when I saw a few of them scurrying around the library. Rowdy still went on alert when he saw them, but as long as he was indoors, he was disinclined to bark. When I saw the pack, I counted at least twenty-five dogs. They circled the shed and pawed at the walls and doors, but gave up after finding no weaknesses in it. I patted myself on the back with my scarred hand for that. I’d done at least one thing right. I made sure that shed was secured every time I closed it. I added a chain and a padlock around the door bar, just in case the dogs figured out that all they had to do was lift one end of it.
The stretch of cold in February was what nearly pushed me to my breaking point. It was too cold. I couldn’t leave the library for more than a few minutes, even with all my cold-weather gear. My eyelids would start to hurt, even with my full face mask, and breathing was hard. The cold steals air from your lungs and makes you short of breath. I went out only when I needed to cut meat from the carcass in the shed, or the daily gathering of snow to melt for water. Other than that, I was anchored to my chair in front of the fire, dog on the dog bed near my feet, and a stack of books on the small, square table next to me.
I plowed through texts like they were firewood. I read everything: children’s books, philosophy texts, nonfiction, fiction, and I even laboriously read and took notes in a copy of a cookbook that was made for cooking on a hearth with cast-iron cookware. From that cookbook
, I learned how to make some seriously kickass steaks using dried spices that I liberated from the grocery store. Rowdy and I enjoyed the thick-cut porterhouse greatly. I would cut up Rowdy’s share into bites and added it to his regular dry food, all of which he would power-chow until the bowl was clean. Then, he would flop on his bed and watch me carefully, lest I toss a chunk of meat and fat in his direction. He would always catch whatever I threw before it hit the ground. He couldn’t catch a Frisbee or a tennis ball to save his life, but he was an absolute assassin when it came to snarking beef out of the air.
The cabin fever hit me hardest in February though. That is also the month where Seasonal Affective Disorder hit me the hardest. February was the bleakest, nastiest, coldest stretch of hell I’d yet endured. The days seemed too cold and short to do anything good. The nights were an abomination. I kept the fire burning hard all day, and it barely kept the room at a decent temperature. I lived in my thermals, my jeans, and my sweatshirts. I wore thin gloves if I was doing anything inside the library outside of the annex. I kept my knit hat on while I slept. I began to become sick of the scent of wood smoke. In my mind, I dreamt that I ahead of where I was. I thought about the coming spring. I thought about summer. I thought about what I would do next year. I vacillated between wanting to stay in Wisconsin, where I knew where everything was, and moving south, where there was far more warmth and resources in the winter. In the south, there was the ocean, swamps, and forests, not to mention farmland that I could use for more than five or six months a year. The harshest winter temps were rarely below 40 degrees. The water never froze solid down south. Any snow they had melted quickly. It was a compelling argument for moving.
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